Sexual Assault Trials To Proceed Against Two

April 29, 1998|By BILL LEUKHARDT; Courant Staff Writer

NEW BRITAIN — One of two men charged with sexually assaulting an unconscious teenage girl in a city park after a night's drinking two years ago lost a motion Tuesday in New Britain Superior Court that could have ended his case.

Judge Lloyd Cutsumpas ruled that defendant Michael Kasprzyk's statement to police implicating himself and co-defendant Wojiech Garbecki was legally obtained and can be used in trials of both men.

Kasprzyk had gone on trial in late March, opting to be tried by a judge, not a jury. But Cutsumpas halted the trial within days after defense counsel Vincent Sabatini said the judge couldn't be impartial because he'd read Kasprzyk's statement, which would taint his outlook on the case. Cutsumpas then removed himself from the case, but said he would rule on pending defense motions, which included striking Kasprzyk's statement.

That statement is key to the state's case because the woman, then 16, can't remember the incident on May 31, 1996. The state alleges she was dragged from a car by the two men, stripped, draped over a rock in Stanley Quarter Park and sexually assaulted.

In his interview with police, Kasprzyk said he helped Garbecki drag the girl over to the rock but that only Garbecki sexually assaulted her. A police officer on routine patrol found the victim, passed out, on the rock. Her body temperature was 95 degrees. She had a 0.425 percent blood-alcohol level. The state defines intoxication in the motor vehicles statutes as 0.10 percent.

Four male friends had been drinking and talking with the girl that night. All four were arrested but only Kasprzyk and Garbecki were charged with second-degree sexual assault.

Kasprzyk and Garbecki were each also charged with conspiracy to commit second- degree sexual assault and first-degree reckless endangerment. Police said the other two, Jacek Stadurska, 18, and Mariusz Burzynski, had passed out earlier from drinking. Charges of first-degree reckless endangerment and interfering with police filed against Stadurska and Burzynski remain pending.

Kasprzyk, now 20, sat quietly in court by his lawyer, saying nothing. The woman, now 18 and a nursing student in an area community college, also said nothing as she watched from a back row in the courtroom.

She said she was apprehensive before the hearing because of the chance the statement might be kept out of the trial, hurting the prosecution.

``I don't know how I can deal with it if nothing happens in court,'' she said, weeping as she sat in an office of the YWCA Sexual Assault Crisis Service. ``I barely made it through when it first happened. I'm scared all the time. It's hard to concentrate in school. And I feel I can't trust anybody.''

No new trial date was set Tuesday. Cutsumpas said a new judge must be named to handle the case because he had taken himself off the case last month.

On Tuesday, prosecutor Mary Rose Flaherty asked for a quick start of a new trial, mainly, she said, because the woman has been waiting since May 1996 for justice.

But Sabatini said it isn't possible, because he has four trials scheduled into June.